"DARE Culmination" - Stuck?! Sketches

I don't know if this happens to you, but I tend to fall head over heels in love with new scrapbooking collections and have to have them and then, once they are here I put them away because I'm too intimidated to use them. Last Fall I purchased several items from two collections: Wild Child and Glitter Girl and put it away to hoard it. For the February Stuck?! Sketches I decided to make an effort to pull out the new stuff and use it. Laura's sketch was a great jumping off point to get me started!

I decided to scrapbook these two photos of my oldest son at his DARE culmination. I remembered I never scrapbooked them when I worked on the same (but different) layout for my middle son. After I pulled out the photos I did not only go through my new papers and embellishments but also looked for coordinating patterns in my stash of patterned papers and created a page kit. And I'm so excited about this discovery! I know page kits aren't a new thing, but they are new to me and I loved having everything there in my bag: papers, embellishments, photos and the sketch. And once I have some free time, I can just grab an scrap.

Here is a closeup of the upper embellishment cluster. I primarily chose the lion for the color and it just felt right there. But then I remembered when voicing over the video that the DARE mascot is DAREN a lion. And so this quite random embellishment makes sense after all. When playing around with my embellishments and the placement of them, I noticed a diagonal tendency that I then emphasized by choosing red embellishments to be placed on the diagonal and by adding the star stickers as a final touch.

This closeup photo shows the title and the chipboard camera that is so old I don't even know what collection it is from. And yes, it's pink and I don't even care: It's close enough to red. I love the dimension it adds to the page and think the combination of old and new embellishments working together so well makes it even better! I added my journaling along the bottom of the

Here is a link to my video on youtube where you can see how this layout came together. Please make sure to check out the Stuck?! Sketches blog and have a look at all the other layouts by the Design Team. We would love for you to play along and link your layout to the link up to win some lovely prizes!